In a previous column, I discussed the effects of individual behavior on an organization. I stressed that we are all unique individuals and that this has much to do with the problems faced by fire departments.
I also covered the first of three groups of variables that affect individual personality: physiological differences. It was my contention that you can tell something about an individual by studying his or her physique. This time, I move more deeply into the study of why people behave as they do. Let’s look at how environmental factors affect the development of human behavior.
How childhood affects adult experiences
Think about your childhood. Was it happy? Were there any tragedies in your family? Do you come from a broken home? Did you grow up in an urban, suburban or rural setting?
While these might seem like simple inquiries, the answers tell a little about what you experienced during your growth and maturation years. Each of us has unique life experiences, regardless of the fact that there are hundreds of millions of us. As a supervisor, remember this, for it is very important in the make-up of your employees and co-workers. For example, would you think that a person who grew up in an orphanage has the same level of love and security as a person who grew to adulthood with loving and supportive parents?
The orphan may have more in the way of psychological baggage to carry. Might he or she also be more self-reliant? Perhaps, or might he or she lack the confidence that can be instilled through the support of parents as life’s trials and errors are endured? Distinctions can also be drawn between the city child and the rural child. The point is that environment can play a large role in a person’s development.
Now that the preliminaries are over, let’s look at the psychological differences your subordinates, co-workers and supervisors can bring to bear on any relationship. To understand why some people consistently perform better than others, you must understand motivation. One of the roots of this study involves the fact that we all have different needs and goals.
A need is defined as a deficiency in our individual experience at a given time. In his classic studies of human behavior, Dr. Abraham Maslow outlined his concept of how we have a differentiated set of needs. At the bottom of his “Hierarchy of Needs,” Maslow placed our basic physiological requirements, such as satisfying hunger and thirst.
Once these needs are satisfied, you can move on to the security-level needs, such as a secure job and a place to live. Maslow’s third level of needs involve the need to belong to something. Be it a family, a club or an employment group, humans crave being a part of something. A leader can create an environment where people feel like they are a part of something.
Once the first three levels of need are satisfied, you can move on to a point where your people achieve some measure of esteem; from the group in the first instance and then in their own mind. It is at this fourth level where the mind of the individual has a great deal to do with how they respond to the organizational stimuli.
Some of the greatest moments in the fire service come from feeling totally accepted by fellow firefighters. This allows one to feel that he or she has true worth and purpose.
There is one final part to Maslow’s text. When all individual needs are met, up to and through the esteem level, it opens up the possibility that on certain occasions, the individual can self-actualize; that is, he or she reaches the pinnacle of his or her career both externally, and more importantly, internally. For firefighters, this sort of moment might come with the successful completion of a particularly dangerous rescue. These periods of self-actualization are few and far between.
Now that we have an understanding of the concept of needs, let’s look at some of the other psychological variables in our individual equation. We all look at things differently. When discussing perceptions, we are concerned with how an individual receives life’s varied signals. Be aware that people may not recognize what you are saying.
Each person in your organization has a particular attitude about things, meaning they have a particular mental state of readiness for need arousal: your readiness to do, think or act. Orders accepted readily by one person may not be as well-received by another.
Each person has a specific ability to learn. Whether such differences come from traits gained through heredity or practices acquired from a person’s environment is the subject of debate. Whatever the reason, you cannot expect people to learn at the same pace. Some will be quick on the uptake and others slow. You must be ready for them all.
It should be obvious to you by now that levels of motivation will vary greatly among your people. They can vary greatly in the same person at different times and under many different circumstances. Motivation might simply be defined as that which makes efforts worthwhile.
The end-product of all that has been discussed to this point is personality. Your personality is the resultant combination of cultural and social factors developed to meet the standards and expectations of your overall social group. In your role as a supervisor, you must consider all of these traits, factors and variables. If you look hard enough, you can even develop a mental road map to some of your fellow fire personnel. However, you will never unlock the key to their minds.
We will close this study of behavior with a quick look at the Needs-Satisfaction Cycle. Behavior is a response to needs and you must understand that a need builds up until it triggers an action to satisfy itself. Simply stated, you perceive a need (thirst). You look for ways to satisfy the need. You choose the appropriate behavior (drink) and perform that thing. You are rewarded with a lack of thirst. If you are not totally satisfied, this will be duly noted under deficiency reassessment and will lead to a trip back through the cycle until your thirst is quenched. So it is for all of your needs.
There are two types of variables which act upon this cycle. At the individual level, each of us can apply greater energy to satisfy the need. Further, each individual has a different ability level (capabilities such as intelligence and special skills).
At the organizational level, there are ways to encourage greater needs satisfaction. Such concepts as job design (how the work is laid out), span of control (how much supervision is given/required) and the effect of a leader’s style upon subordinates play an important part in assisting a person to meet their individual needs in an organizational environment.
You must understand your people if you are to create a fire department wherein individuals can truly reach their maximum potential. You must understand human behavior if you are to be a successful officer. The higher you go in your organization, the greater will the need be for you to understand the impact of human behavior on your organizational equation.
As the success of your efforts to understand interaction between people goes, so too goes the success of your organization. If you cannot understand people, you have no business wearing the gold badge of leadership.
Dr. Carter shares his perspectives in his “The View From my Front Porch” blog at:
http://www.firehouse.com/blogs/the-view-from-my-front-porch.
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The higher you go in your organization, the greater will the need be for you to understand the impact of human behavior on your organizational equation.
